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VMware Price Hike?

There's an old story about economics that I think my dad once told me. It seems
that Smirnoff vodka was losing market share to its lower-priced rival, Wolfschmidt,
back in the '60s. Instead of slashing its prices to match those of Wolfschmidt,
Smirnoff did something no one expected: It raised 'em. All of a sudden, Smirnoff
was a premium brand, and sales rose.

Apparently, VMware is the Smirnoff to Hyper-V's Wolfschmidt. Over in Europe,
VMware
is raising prices, at the exact same time that a nearly free Hyper-V is
coming to market.

That may work for a while, but in the long run, VMware is going to have to
react to Hyper-V pricing. Look at what happened with Netscape. It kept charging
for its browser even as IE was free. Hmm, didn't the Netscape browser business
ultimately disappear?